People are important, pensioners are important and kids are important, and these things must come first before big business

Tommy Sheridan, SSP leader

The party is planning to contest every seat in Scotland during the 2003 election campaign - and the party says it is confident of winning six to eight of them.

Mr Sheridan said: "Within a three year period we have had a remarkable degree of success.

"We have gone from 400 members to almost 3,000 and we are standing at 6% in opinion polls.

"Hopefully we are going to have a significant breakthrough at the next election."

Mr Sheridan added that socialism was having a re-birth prompted by the high degree of disillusionment within big business parties "who are all promoting the same message that the free market is the way forward despite low wages, insecurity and the lack of pensions".

The SSP's 60 branches includes two opened recently, one in Shetland and the other in Annan.

Mr Sheridan said: "We are across the population of Scotland and we have links internationally with groups similarly minded across Europe.

"People are important, pensioners are important and kids are important, and these things must come first before big business."